Children and Parents

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. Acquired brain injury
is not the kind of thing anyone wants or plans on so unless you know someone
who has it, you wouldn't know...but maybe you should. There are two known
types of brain injury.

Making decisions for others
is never easy. In fact, it’s probably one of the hardest things one can do for
someone, especially if that person is their child. When a family is coping with
mental illness and intense special needs and a parent is charged with not only
choosing interventions to support what a child’s life will look like as they
grow but also what their adulthood will look like long after they themselves
are deceased, the challenge becomes overwhelming.

I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed the look
of loss in the eyes of parents when school district personnel say, “Your student would be better served in a
functional based program”. At
that moment the walls are go up and the hopes for their son or daughter to
enjoy a positive quality of life, like everyone else, deteriorate.

For centuries, scientists
believed that when you reached adulthood, your brain was finished developing, and
the only way it could change was to worsen by aging, disease, or accidents.
This meant you were stuck with your brain’s limitations for the rest of your
life. So of course, they believed dyslexia was a fixed condition and not
capable of changing or of being reversed.

Our family’s story became a national
discussion when, after years of unsuccessful advocating for support for our
mentally and organically disabled daughter, we made a decision to send her to
live with another family in another state where she would be able to get the
support that eluded us.

Until
now, my kids have only attended classes or groups if they are offered by groups
that can manage my son’s needs. My daughter has bugged me for years about
joining swimming, gymnastics, knitting, etc classes. Each time, I would tell
her that I would look into it, and hope the topic didn’t come up again. I grew
up doing A LOT of extra-curricular activities: ballet, skating, soccer, band,
orchestra, etc. I was never home directly after school other than to grab my
skates. ;)

The 14th
Special Olympics World Summer Games is coming to Los Angeles! Over 7000 Special
Olympic from 170 nations will compete in the 2015 games taking place in Los
Angeles, CA. More than half a million people will attend!

This will be the first
time in 16 years since this event takes place in the United States, and the second
time since 1972 that Los Angeles has the honor of hosting it.